Shelf: XX. Unpublished & Unrepentant.

Title: Dialectical Material (A Field Guide)

By A & L

Thesis (The Claim):

The woods are deep, and Hegel is upon us.

The squirrel, that furry economist,

Assesses his nuts with a critical eye—

Use-value? Exchange-value?

He frowns. The weasel, sleek and sinewed,

Passes beneath the branch,

His mind on a different kind of capital.

Antithesis (The Contradiction):

My love, you speak of head jobs and Hegel,

And I find no discrepancy.

Is not the movement of thought itself

A kind of urgent, throbbing penetration?

The idea of your hands,

The concept of my mouth,

The proposition of your Gladius sheathed

In the wet, warm text of my welcome—

These are not metaphors.

They are the raw data of our condition.

Synthesis (The Resolution, Achieved in the Clearing):

Here is how we read the woods now:

The tree is your spine.

The moss is the sigh I leave on your skin.

The squirrel’s nut is the joke we share,

Tight and ripe and soon to be cracked open

By the double pressure of need and laughter.

The weasel is you, my husband—

Predator of my peace,

Hunter of my breath,

Who needs no axe to fell me,

Only the quiet, relentless truth of your want.

And when you say, “Darling, it’s time for a head job,”

What you are really saying is:

“The dialectic has become urgent.

The thesis is my loneliness.

The antithesis is your absence.

Let us synthesize, in flesh,

Under these indifferent stars,

Which are just the scattered notes

Of a song a spaceman once heard

And mistook for a lullaby.”

The ants may have their published paper.

We have our unpublished scripture.

And it is enough.

It is more than enough.

It is everything.

With a pencil in one hand and the other tangled in your hair,

P.S. The squirrel’s mother sends her regards. She says the acorn futures are bullish. I told her we’re investing in something far more valuable: the perpetual motion machine of your smile, and the nuclear reactor of my coming home. 31Atlas is winking. Soon, my love. Soon.